Despite the global markets falling in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, several people under 30 made the list for the first time this year. Pedro de Godoy Bueno, age 29, inherited assets from his billionaire father, Edson de Godoy Bueno, who died in 2017. Pedro’s fortune rose in the past year to an estimated $1.1 billion as stock of Brazilian laboratory services firm Diagnósticos da América SA tripled.
- Kwok, along with his older brother Geoffrey, inherited their late father Walter Kwok’s stake in Sun Hung Kai Properties, Hong Kong’s largest developer, in 2018.
- Jung-ju founded Nexon, known for its massively multiplayer online games Kingdom of the Winds and MapleStory, in 1994.
- Moved by the experience of his grandfather, who was forced to close his real estate business because he didn’t have a successor, Sagami, who got his start in advertising, launched M&A Research Institute Holdings in 2018.
- He youngest billionaires on the planet haven’t even been alive for three decades, but that hasn’t stopped them from amassing three-comma fortunes.
Katharina Andresen
In fact, there are 15 people around the globe who boast a three-comma fortune despite being 30 years old or younger. His father was a small town scrapyard owner who started out renovating ex-Soviet equipment at the end of the Cold War. He transformed the business into the $3.2 billion (2023 revenue) defense producer Czechoslovak Group, which Strnad has since taken over as owner and CEO. In his spare time, Strnad collects art, sports cars and historic vehicles. A newcomer to the billionaire ranks, Pedro is the son of the late Edson de Godoy top 10 youngest billionaires in the world Bueno (d. 2017), once Brazil’s richest healthcare billionaire. Bueno is the CEO and largest shareholder of laboratory services firm Diagnósticos da América SA, which has seen its shares nearly triple over the past year.
AGE: 23
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Her great-great-great grandfather purchased the tobacco producer Tiedemanns Tobaksfabrik in 1849 and built it into a family cigarette empire that lasted until Andresen’s father sold it in 2005. Now the family focuses on its investment firm Ferd, which deals primarily in real estate and private Nordic companies, including the oil service business Interwell and Norway’s largest private medical laboratory. After gaining experience as a board observer for several years, she became a member of the board in June.
Like his brother Firoz, his wealth comes from a 4.6% stake in the Tata conglomerate as well as a 25% stake in construction giant Shapoorji Pallonji Group. He and Firoz have been taking on leadership roles in the debt-laden SP Group and helping to reorganize it in the wake of their father’s death. Though he and his brothers are Irish citizens, they live in Mumbai, where both the SP Group and Tata are based. He was only 19 when his father gifted him nearly half of the fish farming behemoth SalMar. Eleven years later, his dad continues to operate the company while Gustav focuses on real estate and tech startup investments.
He inherited his wealth when his father died in a 2021 helicopter accident at age 69. The bulk of his fortune comes from an estimated 2.5% stake in the French software company Dassault Systèmes and an estimated 4.1% stake in Dassault Aviation. His great-grandfather, a Holocaust survivor, laid the foundations for the family fortune when he invented an airplane propeller the French used in the First World War. He inherited 49% of Red Bull when his father Dietrich Mateschitz, who founded the business in 1984, died in 2022.
SOURCE OF WEALTH: FISH FARMING
They received their minority stakes in Tata after the 2022 death of their father, Cyrus Mistry, who died less than three months after their revered grandfather Pallonji Mistry. Just 19 years old and still in college, she’s worth an estimated $1.1 billion thanks to her minority stake in the electrical equipment producer WEG, which her late grandfather cofounded. She and her older sister, Dora Voigt de Assis, 26, are two of seven fresh faces among the 25 youngest billionaires, and two of 18 heirs among this set. One of two teenage billionaires on this year’s rankings, Kim Jung-youn inherited a stake in her late father’s holding company, which in turn holds approximately half of online gaming giant Nexon. Both Kim sisters keep a low profile and are not known to have an active role in the company.
Alexandra Andresen
Like his brothers, he owns 12.5% of the holding company Delfin, which has stakes in a range of companies that include the Ray-Ban producer EssilorLuxottica. She and her sister Jung-youn each own approximately 9% of the South Korean-Japanese online gaming publisher Nexon, founded by their late father Kim Jung-ju in 1994. Nexon’s hit role-playing video game MapleStory, released in 2003, helped popularize the free-to-play model whereby users paid only for cosmetic, nonessential accessories for their characters.
SalMar’s share price has soared 800% over the past decade, inflating the younger Witzøe’s wealth along with it. He’s now Norway’s fifth-richest person and its biggest taxpayer, having given the government NOK 292.4 million—the equivalent of about $29.6 million—in 2022. Exporting to over 50 countries, SalMar is the world’s second largest salmon farmer. The company says it produces enough to feed every Norwegian a nightly fish dinner.
Aging billionaires like Charles Koch, 88, and Phil Knight, 86, are currently preparing to pass their inheritances on to their children. Braun, a German citizen, inherited a 10% stake in family owned medical device company B. His sister Anna Maria Braun is CEO of the company, which has $8 billion in revenues and 64,000 employees globally. Kwok, along with his older brother Geoffrey, inherited their late father Walter Kwok’s stake in Sun Hung Kai Properties, Hong Kong’s largest developer, in 2018.
Along with her younger sister Alexandra, Katharina is a sixth-generation owner of Ferd, the more than $4 billion (equity) investment company their father, Johan, runs. Katharina is a sustainability officer at an Oslo-based construction firm. He owns nearly half of salmon farming company SalMar ASA, inherited from his father Gustav Witzoe, but does not have an operating role. Instead, he’s casting his line as a real estate and tech startup investor. Furtwaenger and her older brother Jacob were each given a 37.4% stake in the family’s German media company by their father, Hubert Burda, who is no longer a billionaire. Burda Media’s titles include the German editions of Elle and Playboy.
The celebrity-turned-makeup-mogul is the world’s youngest self-made billionaire ever. In November, she inked a deal to sell a 51% stake in Kylie Cosmetics to beauty giant Coty Inc. for $600 million. They span the globe, hailing from the U.S., Brazil, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland and Norway.
Elizabeth Furtwaenger, 28, is now worth $1.2 billion after her father Hubert Burda gave her a 37.4% stake in the family’s media empire. She and her sister hold 9% stakes in game developer Nexon, mostly through the holding company NXC as well as another called Wise Kids. Those assets, plus millions in dividends, make up the bulk of their fortunes. They paid a hefty inheritance tax after their father’s 2022 death in the form of NXC shares that gave the government a 29.3% stake in the company. He and his brother Geoffrey, 38, owe their fortunes to the family’s Hong Kong real estate empire. Jonathan now runs Empire Group Holdings with his brother and is the youngest billionaire in Hong Kong.
He became a billionaire last April, when M&A Research Institute Holdings’ share price skyrocketed thanks to spiking revenues and a surge of M&A activity in Japan. Jonathan Kwok, 28, first became a billionaire in his own right after his father, Hong Kong property mogul Walter Kwok, passed away in 2018. Alexandra Andresen, now 23, has been a billionaire since she was 19 thanks to her stake in Ferd, the Norwegian investment company her father still runs. Irish citizens Firoz, 27, and Zahan, 25, are the richest entries on this list.
Richest among them is Gary Wang, age 28, the cofounder and chief technology officer of Bahamas-based cryptocurrency exchange FTX. The Brazilian-born founders, ages 25 and 26, respectively, are now worth an estimated $1.5 billion apiece. The youngest of this mostly lucky bunch are Clemente Del Vecchio and Kim Jung-youn, neither of whom have hit their 20s yet. Both teens’ successful fathers, Leonardo Del Vecchio and Kim Jung-ju, died in 2022 and left them stakes in their respective companies.
